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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423989">ultraviolence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition'>heartcondition</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Blood and Gore, Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Quarter Quell, Slightly Non-Linear Narrative</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:54:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One of these days, Soonyoung's pretty sure he's going to kill Minghao. </p><p>Not today, not tomorrow. But definitely soon.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Xu Ming Hao | The8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>ultraviolence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ADDITIONAL CW FOR: thoughts that could be considered suicidal ideation</p><p>anyway. i will finish this when i find the sticky note i wrote the ending on</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>In a train headed towards the Capitol at 400 kilometers per hour, Soonyoung watches Minghao’s name get pulled from the glass reaping bowl in near slow motion. The camera hangs on the slip of paper, zoomed in close enough to see the hair follicles on the escort from Four’s hand.</p><p>He doesn’t watch long enough to see Minghao calmly climb the steps to the platform, just mutes the volume and walks sedately through a few more cars to meet Jihoon for supper. He’ll probably be ready with a plan by now, ready to tell Soonyoung his interviews always come across slightly awkward and offbeat, that he needs to pick something and sell it already, hit the ground running with a fistful of sponsors this time. But when Soonyoung makes it to the dinner car, Jihoon just looks at him kind of sadly while a few avoxes lay dish after dish on the table. Braised beef, sweet wine, candied vegetables. The smell of it floods Soonyoung's senses and nauseates him even as he sits down, hungry. He twirls a fork.</p><p>“Well you look fucking miserable,” Jihoon finally says.</p><p>Soonyoung smiles grimly. “Can’t you see I’m really happy? This is just like old times.”</p><p>Jihoon relaxes in his dining chair, back of his head hitting the dark wood on the frame of it. “What district are they on?”</p><p>“Probably Three, by now,” Soonyoung replies. </p><p>Jihoon swirls the water in his glass, condensation gathering beneath it on the table. “Who got pulled in Four?”</p><p>Soonyoung thinks of Minghao, one brow raised ever so slightly as the cameras cut to him in the crowd of victors, the silence solidifying as his reaping was not met with a volunteer. No one who knew him would get in the way of his next shot at glory. “Didn’t see,” Soonyoung says.</p><p>Jihoon shrugs, chewing already. “Well, I guess either way we’ll know soon enough.” He glances at Soonyoung, calculating. “Maybe they’ll bring back those desert arenas and starve you all out. Eat up.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Soonyoung won his games when he was eighteen years old, a hairsbreadth away from escaping being reaped altogether, wildcarding his way into the Capitol’s heart. His handaxe was epochal. Round seventy-one lasted three whole weeks. The six months he spent back in Seven were mostly a blur; still working in the groves because he had nothing else to do, everyone he knew committed to keeping a wide berth around him, off-put.</p><p>When the year hit the halfway mark, Soonyoung’s victory tour dragged him across Panem in a haze of opulent parties and dreary public appearances. He had turned nineteen in the six month gap between being airlifted out of the arena and being ushered back onto the train, thrust back into the Capitol spotlight, whether he wanted it or not. He gave stale speeches delivered with practiced pace and diction even when all he wanted to do was break down to his knees and beg for forgiveness. He got numb, got good at it.</p><p>Soonyoung’s entourage ascended through the districts without much memorable incident until the afterparty in District Four. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the Capitol, but it was extravagant enough. A few steps above anything going on in Seven, certainly, but lacking the uncomfortable grandiosity Soonyoung would later find in Two and One. Soonyoung drank too much of something he didn’t even know was alcoholic, then hovered by the edge of the ballroom floor that met with a long, white buffet table. The music swelled and then waned, played on instruments a few people in Seven knew how to carve, and the concentric circles of people dancing in the ballroom slowed down, changing pace. </p><p>Nobody wanted to talk to him beyond the required pleasantries, but Soonyoung couldn’t really blame them. Four’s tributes were taken out by a split-off half of the Career pack long before Soonyoung could have ever gotten to them, but still; Soonyoung was here, and a Four tribute wasn’t.</p><p>Across the floor, Soonyoung finally spotted someone he recognized. For a minute he couldn’t figure out from where or from what, but the crowd fissured for a moment, and Soonyoung realized it was last year's victor; Xu Minghao. Soonyoung had thought he was handsome and strangely charming, watching round seventy go down, for someone that had just killed nearly twenty people. As far as victors went, people liked him well enough.</p><p>The Capitol liked Soonyoung because his kills were messy. Sickly. Passionate. They liked Minghao because he was so mesmerizingly clean. In his victory interview, he’d said it was as easy as skinning a fish. Maybe even easier. </p><p>Soonyoung couldn’t really say his kills were as therapeutic as chopping up wood, but he got it. You get trained to swing an axe your whole life, it doesn’t really matter anymore what the blade is hitting, just that you follow through. For a Career, he imagined, it was probably like that, only tenfold.</p><p>Minghao turned, catching Soonyoung staring. Just stood there, staring back. Soonyoung placed his glass down on the buffet table and walked through the crowd, parting it easily as people flinched out of his way. </p><p>“Do you dance?” Minghao asked, the second he was within a step of him.</p><p>Soonyoung’s prep team had taught him how they did it in Four on the train. The question took him by surprise. He could hardly picture Xu Minghao, deadly any way you turned him, twirling in a ballroom—or anywhere else for that matter. Soonyoung smiled sideways. “Do you?”</p><p>That seemed to surprise Minghao, too. “Of course. We still get to have a little fun, even with all the training.”</p><p>And that was that. Soonyoung was out on the glittering floor with one hand clasped in Xu Minghao’s, grip adjusting every few bars of music as they slowly turned, came together and apart again. His palm was cold from the ice that had been in his drink. The silence between them grew warm and oddly comfortable, like steam unfurling. They looked at each other.</p><p>“I thought you might be different up close,” Minghao said amicably. Soonyoung ducked under his arm, pivoting on the ball of his left foot.</p><p>“Different how?”</p><p>“Less deadly. I’ve met a lot of victors. You’ll realize about half of them just got a great gamemakers’ cut.”</p><p>“Did you?” Soonyoung pressed. It felt like sparring, vaguely. Calculated steps, looking for the higher ground.</p><p>“No,” Minghao said. “I tend to think not. But I do think they made me look bad.”</p><p>Soonyoung laughed. Minghao was easily the most beloved victor by the Capitol from the last ten years, got shipped across the continent at the whim of the Capitol day in and day out. Legacy type shit. He got a steel trident sent down to him on the second day of his games, washed the blood from each prong meticulously in the tidal flats after each and every kill, always waded far enough out into the ocean to scrub his face clean. He stole every tribute’s token, most of which was jewelry, fastened it all to the helve so that when he walked, it rattled. There were rumors the Capitol let him keep it. </p><p>“But you’re a star,” Soonyoung said, grand, near laughing, mimicking the pinpointable, synthetic intonation of Kim Kibum’s voice at every pre and post games show. He’d said the same to Soonyoung, on his own victory night, the final cannon still ringing in his ears like an echo.</p><p>Minghao volleyed, quick and clever. “Then, so are you.” </p><p>Soonyoung flushed. “I don’t feel that way.”</p><p>“And you think I do?”</p><p>“No,” Soonyoung said. Sure of it. </p><p>They’d stopped dancing, a stalled gear piece in the middle of the fully functioning room. Luck caught them as the music faded, and Four’s mayor ascended the dais, ready to give the obligatory speech. He was a better public speaker than Soonyoung was, certainly; more engaging, more well spoken. But Minghao touched Soonyoung’s left shoulder, probably not knowing that the skin underneath his tux was a palm-sized hunk of scar tissue.</p><p>“You don’t want to listen to this, do you?” he whispered. Soonyoung’s shoulder felt like a blooming onion, the skin unfurling layer after layer beneath the heat.  </p><p>“Not really.”</p><p>“There’s a door in the back that leads out to the waterfront,” Minghao said, setting his half empty glass down on a tray as an avox wandered by. Soonyoung raised a brow. “Oh, come on. You get how it is. You’ll know every Justice Building in Panem like the back of your hand in a year from now, too.”</p><p>“Right,” Soonyoung said, kind of stiff. For a minute, he’d forgotten this section of his life was a seemingly endless sprawl, no end in sight. Minghao took a step backwards and turned as he walked off. Soonyoung looked around briefly, then followed. </p><p>Minghao led him through a series of heavy doors, an ornate room with a long, darkly stained table, and a dimly lit hall lined with photos and glass cases.</p><p>“Victor’s memorabilia,” Minghao explained flatly, nodding towards it. “Usually tokens. Not much use for them, afterwards.”</p><p>The hall turned sharply right, the outer wall suddenly studded with windows, all perpendicular to the sea. Minghao reached for a copper doorknob, and the lukewarm night air washed over them in a muggy sheet, thick and balmy.</p><p>“You’ve seen the ocean, right?” Minghao said, stepping outside.</p><p>“From train windows,” said Soonyoung. Part of Seven supposedly has miles of coastline, but Soonyoung lived too far inland to ever be close to it. Occasionally when the harvest was good, they’d send crabs inland towards the pineries, hundreds of them still live, crawling around in inches of water when someone finally got a crowbar and pried the lids off the shipments.</p><p>Minghao looked him up and down, blocking the doorway. “Is your babysitter gonna care if you disappear and your outfit gets ruined?”</p><p>“Who, Jihoon? He would’ve left me at home if Snow’d allow it. He’s probably eating seconds at dinner right now. Doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“Just checking,” Minghao said.</p><p>The stone path out towards the berm crest disappeared into the sand the farther from the Justice Building they got, Soonyoung’s shoes sinking in and filling with the grains of it. He bent over and pulled them off along with his socks, holding his shoes by the laces as he caught up with Minghao again. The sound of the ocean washed over the night in a droning hush, fading in, fading out.</p><p>Becoming a victor seemed to be blanket permission for behaving however you wanted, Soonyoung’s noticed. So he didn’t feel bad, looking at the waves rushing out over craggy rocks halfway out into the surf, and asking, “Doesn’t this remind you of…?”</p><p>“My games?” </p><p>Soonyoung nodded, already sort of wishing he hadn’t actually brought it up.</p><p>“Sometimes. Rocks were a different color, though.” He kicked off his shoes and walked straight into the water, diving into an oncoming wave and coming up the other side. Minghao scrubbed a hand down his face and slicked his hair back as he stood to his full height, spitting seawater. He looked around, pensive. “Can’t think about it too much, though, can I? Imagine if every time you looked at a field you passed out.”</p><p>“Right,” Soonyoung said, stunned. Jihoon had told him all victors were a little—off, and he’d definitely believed him, but it was still strange to see it up close. Then again, Soonyoung was the one about to dive in after him, so he didn’t have room to say much.</p><p>“You coming in?” Minghao asked. He bent over, picked up a seashell, looked at it for a few seconds before dropping it back into the water again. “It’s not that cold.”</p><p>Soonyoung stepped into the foam welling at the edge of the wet sand, letting a small wave wash over his feet. It sent a jolt up his nervous system. “It’s definitely cold,” he yelped, voice high. </p><p>“Just get in!”</p><p>Soonyoung steeled himself, took a step, and dove into the oncoming swell. Full body shock at the chill of it. He stood up, shaking his bangs out of his face, water cascading back into the ocean from his elbows. It was almost refreshing until something slimy slid along his ankle. Soonyoung jumped and scurried back onto the shoreline, falling to the sand in relief when Minghao reached beneath the surface and pulled out a clump of seaweed.</p><p>“Wow, you’ve <em>really</em> never seen the ocean,” Minghao had said.</p><p>Soonyoung laid flat, feeling the sand on his back, sticking in his hair. He stared at the ink-dark sky, willing his heart rate to slow. He picked his head up and scowled. “Seven. Lumber. Quit laughing, I thought I was gonna die! I’ve heard of sharks before, okay?”</p><p>“You’d probably know if there was a shark in hip-deep water,” Minghao said. “Besides, you’re not going to die here tonight.”</p><p>Soonyoung made a face, sitting up. “How do you know?”</p><p>“I just know. It’d be pretty disappointing if you did, anyway. Wouldn’t it?” Minghao walked up the short incline towards the wet sand, lobbing the handful of seaweed at Soonyoung’s feet with a short laugh. His clothes were sticking to him, slightly see-through.</p><p>“What, you think you can see the future?” said Soonyoung.</p><p>“No, I just trust my intuitions. Always have.”</p><p>“Is that not some line you fed to the Capitol?” Soonyoung said. </p><p>Minghao sat next to him on the sand, legs straight out in front of him. He looked sideways at Soonyoung, leaned back on his palms. “No. It was like knowing exactly which character I was in the story,” Minghao said. “Which pawn I was on the board.” And then Minghao was leaning over and kissing him.</p><p>Soonyoung’s first reaction was visceral. He nearly reared back and hit Minghao on rewired instinct, unused to contact not designed to hurt him. Minghao caught his wrist instead of flinching, then laughed lightly against his mouth.</p><p>Soonyoung had kissed plenty of people back in Seven. Apart from lumbering and the occasional educational stint when they managed to actually run the schools, there wasn’t much else to do, growing up. And they were never very modest people in Seven to begin with. Thousands of trees obscured long distance vision in every direction, and made it easy to hide, bark rough as hell up against Soonyoung’s back, somebody’s work-callused palm sliding up the plane of his stomach towards his ribs like river over rock.</p><p>Minghao was gritty with sand in Soonyoung’s hands and slightly damp, tasted like the sea salt ice cream the caterers had left melting out on the tables in the great hall. It was the most tangible Soonyoung had felt in weeks.</p><p>He’d been floating unmoored from district to district, drinking and eating and giving speeches, then drinking and eating and giving a speech again. And, even with all the excessive calories, still looking slightly emaciated. Ribcage like a xylophone, hinge of the jaw nearly visible beneath his skin. </p><p>Minghao laughed against his mouth, reciprocated the closeness with ease when Soonyoung wrapped both arms around him, holding them together and squeezing slightly. Minghao’s hands went to either side of Soonyoung’s face, his teeth grazing against Soonyoungs lip briefly before tilting his head, licking hotly into his mouth. A wave broke at their feet, foaming up past the ankles, ticklish at the back of the calves.</p><p>Later, they avoided the party and ascended a backend spiral staircase, up to the living quarters for the mayor and his family on the top floor of the justice building, down the long glittering hall to the guest room that had been delegated to Soonyoung. When Soonyoung opened the doors, the brass hinges groaned and creaked, and a corner ran into the trunk of clothes his prep team had hauled upstairs for him, leathery and dark.</p><p>Soonyoung’s quarters for the night were fucking massive, bed three times the size of his own back home. The floor was thousands of seashells embedded in rock and glazed with clear resin, uneven, hitting pressure points in his bare feet. The windows were wide and open, the smell of brine wafting in on the breeze. </p><p>Six months later Soonyoung would meet Minghao again; confined to the Capitol and bound to newfound mentorship duties. Minghao would smell like the ocean beneath the sharp tang of Capitol perfumes, and they’d kiss again, watch their respective Districts’ tributes meet death like hunger turning to a spoon.</p><p>On the top floor of Four’s Justice Building, Soonyoung fell back onto the bed. Lost his suit jacket and his shirt in one fell swoop, felt the sickly rush of adrenaline again; every last hair on his body a live wire, suddenly aware of all his cartilage, his heartbeat in his ears like a cannon. Skin crawling.</p><p>Fucking Minghao that night felt like—dying. A kind of closure Soonyoung needed.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Minghao’s mouth tilts up at the corners when he spots Soonyoung, eyes roving across his body, slow. Behind him, pairs of avoxes lead the chariot horses away, luring them with handfuls of sugar cubes.</p><p>“Another tree in a long line of trees,” Minghao says, nodding his head at Soonyoung’s getup. Each year, the stylists in Seven dress their tributes like a pair of redwoods, or leaves, or some other ridiculous shit that never does them any favors. This year, Soonyoung made his return to the Parade in wide leg trousers, green so dark they’re almost black, a top made of material so thick that it hardly folds, leaves embossed in its surface, the neck cut in a V so wide the apex of it falls against his sternum, and stained wooden laurels that scratch at his scalp. “District Seven never changes.” </p><p>Soonyoung gives him the same once over. “Neither does Four.” Minghao’s still thinner than a nail file, wound with whipcord muscles, looks like a cast of his past self in a layering of ropey net and fabric embroidered with impossibly small seashells. Blue twine coils around his neck, roughly cut lengths of it cascading down his back like a sheet of water, falling. “I didn’t miss this part when we were mentors.” </p><p>Tributes file out from the holding area at the end of the stadium, heading back to the training center. Minghao shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Looks at him, steady. “I wish you weren’t here,” he says.</p><p>Soonyoung smiles morbidly. “I feel the same about you.” </p><p>Minghao doesn’t mince. “Do you think you can do it? Again?”</p><p>“I didn’t even think I could do it the first time.” Even worse, the gamemakers know him well, now, and have Minghao to dangle in front of him, if they’re not careful. He’s seen enough Games to know that it’s not hard for what you love most to turn into the thing that will kill you; traps and mutts, fishhooks for his pain. “I wasn’t the best in my lot. I’m not a career.”</p><p>“Got a grudge?” Minghao jibes.</p><p>“Oh, I’ve got nothing against careers,” Soonyoung jokes. “It’s just you that I hate.”</p><p>Minghao smiles but doesn’t laugh, barely huffing air through his nose. Jeonghan and Jihoon hover at the edge of the holding area, close to the elevators that lead up to the training center and their respective rooms, waiting to collect them. Minghao glances towards them both, and Jihoon pretends to be looking the other way.</p><p>“Come to my room, later,” Minghao says. “After you’re finished with him.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>“Nope,” Jihoon says sternly. “Sit.”</p><p>“Come on,” Soonyoung complains. “We’ve done this before. I’ve literally had your job. I know the drill.”</p><p>“This isn’t a normal games.” Jihoon rolls his silver ring around the table, caught between his palm and the wood. “Look, I’m not blind. Minghao and you—”</p><p>“Don’t.”</p><p>“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Soonyoung huffs. Jihoon barrels on. “You and Minghao have the popularity of the most recent wins of the tribute lot on your side. The same sponsors will line up for you—maybe more, even, now that you’ve both been solidified in the Capitol memory. But that also puts a huge target on your backs. Because you’re on the young end of the bunch, Minghao’s a career, and you didn’t really win by—luck.”</p><p>“I mean, I wouldn't really say I won with skill, though, either.”</p><p>“I’m being serious,” Jihoon says. “Sponsorships, the weapons you want...those things will play out for you. All we can do is make the gamemakers a little soft on you if you can nail the Kibum interview, and gain a little extra empathetic support. That has weight. Think Mingyu in...what was it? Sixty-seven? Clean sweep.”</p><p>“I’m shit with Kibum,” Soonyoung says. He always clams up at first when the spotlight’s finally on him, unsure what to do with the attention. “I get...nervous.”</p><p>“I know. Last time, in seventy-one, you were a fucking mess. You get weird for a minute, but then you get good. Back then it made people like you well enough, but. I just think...in these games...a good interview will really pay. More than usual.”</p><p>Soonyoung swallows. “Alright. But I can’t promise much.”</p><p>“We’ll work on it.”</p><p>“I never know what to say,” Soonyoung says in a rush. “His talking points come from out of nowhere.”</p><p>“Yes, but he always lands on the same ones. Like a script where whatever you say doesn’t have any impact or matter. Sleep on it. Tomorrow, I’ll have something together and prep you for it. We’ve got a few days.”</p><p>Soonyoung blinks. “Wow. You’re a better mentor than I remember.”</p><p>“Well. I grew up.”</p><p>“Are you saying you had an underdeveloped brain when you mentored me?”</p><p>Jihoon smiles, laughing a little, but grim. “You know I did.” Soonyoung can still remember him, then; eighteen years old and cross as hell, already over the whole mentor deal after one single go. Being counseled by some kid the same age didn’t sit with Soonyoung so well, but Jihoon was all he had. Before he won and for a good while afterwards.</p><p>“Well, I forgive you,” Soonyoung says, smarmy.</p><p>Jihoon rolls his eyes. “I’m so relieved.”</p><p>“Can I go now?” </p><p>“Yeah, just. Don’t put this off completely. I think we really—I think you really…”</p><p>“What, have a shot? That’s uncharacteristically optimistic of you.”</p><p>“Well, would you rather I gave up?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Then quit fighting me,” Jihoon says, eyes rolling.</p><p>“I’m not fighting you, I just like to argue.”</p><p>“That’s the same thing.”</p><p>“Is it?”</p><p>“Can you get out of here?” Jihoon complains, but he’s grinning. “Snow isn’t gonna like it if I kill one of his highest-profile tributes when there isn’t a camera to be found anywhere in the room.”</p><p>“I’m going,” Soonyoung says, putting both hands up in surrender. He walks backwards slowly, taking exaggerated steps. “You should be nicer to me, you know. I could be dead in a few days, just a warning.”</p><p>Soonyoung spins around and keeps walking. He picks up the stack of notes about other tributes by the door Jihoon had left him, though he doesn't really need it. Four years in the system made him at least passingly familiar with every victor from the past three decades, but he appreciates the effort. They're handwritten.</p><p>“Soonyoung,” Jihoon calls flatly. Soonyoung stops at the door, turns to face him. Jihoon rolls his ring under his palm again, finally looks up. “You were my second victory,” he says. Face betraying nothing, but Soonyoung knows. He, too, watched year after year as the machine swallowed District Seven’s tributes. As mentors, they were both puppet masters with access to only one of the strings—enough to make a difference, but not enough to have control. Jihoon was the first living person Soonyoung saw after they excised him from the arena, his vision still blurry with sunbursts. For four years, they’ve lived as neighbors in the Victor’s Village. There’s an old woman, there, too, at the end of the street, but she only leaves her house every few weeks. For four years, just Soonyoung and Jihoon, circling life like dogs who can never find sleep. </p><p>Soonyong doesn’t want to cry right now. There’s plenty of time for it, and Jihoon would never let him live it down. He stands in the door, though, one hand gripping the frame of it. “You were my first.”</p><p>Turned away from him, Jihoon looks out the windows. The strange buildings of the Capitol serry the darkening sky into jagged shapes, hardly even look real. “Kwon Soonyoung,” Jihoon says. “Let’s make this a third.”</p><p>  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Can we not talk about it any more today? Let’s face it tomorrow.”</p><p>“Tomorrow,” Minghao agrees. “What’s new in the pinery?”</p><p>“We were just starting the burns in the sequoia groves,” Soonyoung says sadly. </p><p>“Your favorite part of the year.”</p><p>“Yes.” Soonyoung always volunteered to take the night shift on the blazes, because he liked how the red glow and the haze of smoke made it look like the whole world was burning. For days he would smell like a fire pit.</p><p>Soonyoung touches Minghao’s knee with the tips of two fingers. “How’s Four?”</p><p>“Sometimes Jeonghan comes over when he gets one of the ladies at the market to sell him some wine. We do target practice in the yard some days.”</p><p>“I hate thinking of you this way,” Soonyoung says suddenly, ignoring the prior conversation. Not knowing if he means all alone or as a kind of enemy. He has two images of Minghao, one version gleaned through a television screen, the other tactile, sweet and hot. It’s rare that they ever come together at all, often slipping and spinning but never overlapping completely. He’s afraid that he won’t like who this Minghao is, or even worse, that he already does, now that they’re inextricable, all tangled up like a pair of silver necklaces.</p><p>“I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”</p><p>“I don’t know what else to talk about.” Soonyoung picks at the fabric of his sweatpants. All the fabric here is softer, the thread somehow cleaner looking than the best thing he could get his hands on in Seven, and it just makes him angry. “I thought...we were done. The Capitol was finished with us, for the most part.”</p><p>Minghao looks at him, saying nothing.</p><p>“Is this what my life is about, now? Not even surviving. Just picking a time to die.”</p><p>Minghao tilts his head. “That’s unusually fatalistic of you.”</p><p>“Fatalistic?”</p><p>“Predetermined by fate. Unchangeable. Not able to be challenged.”</p><p>“I hated Seven’s schools,” Soonyoung says, laughing as he rubs at his stinging eyes. “They never taught me anything.”</p><p>“I’m a career,” Minghao says, laughing, too. “You think<em> I </em> know shit?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Soonyoung shrugs. “I mean, I have been hit in the head with a rock, so. Fucking District Twelve, man.”</p><p>Minghao touches Soonyoung's scalp where he knows the divot of the scar is, running a finger along it’s ridges, a miniature valley at the crown of his head. He’s quiet for a minute, then drops his hand back to Soonyoung’s thigh on the bed. “If it matters, I don’t think that’s the choice you have to make. When to die.”</p><p>“Then, what?”</p><p>Minghao lays back on the mattress, sinking into the fluffy comforter like its quicksand. He stretches, both hands behind his head, ribcage jutting out through his t-shirt.“I’ve never thought that it matters much who lives, in the games,” he says, staring at the ceiling. “That factor is a constant. The question isn’t how you will do it, or even if you can. The question is; what will you let it cost you?”</p><p>Soonyoung says nothing. Lays himself atop Minghao, head turned to the side, ear against his chest. He wedges each hand beneath Minghao’s body and the bed, feeling the knobs of his spine there. He can suddenly feel how heavy he is, how heavy they both were, hip bones digging into each other. Like that, he can sense Minghao’s heartbeat in his stomach. He picks up his head and looks down at Minghao, so close that his image becomes distorted, warped like a fish-eye lens.</p><p>“Can you breathe if I do this?” Soonyoung says quietly.</p><p>Minghao closes his eyes. Soonyoung listens to the air go out of him. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Soonyoung rolls his eyes as the blade of a throwing knife lands square in the center of the cork target, thudding dully as the tip hits the tougher backing. “Show off.” </p><p>The training room this year is massive and meticulously clean. Half the victors have come to fight the days out, the other half have given up or simply don’t bother. Soonyoung recognizes most of them, has passing familiarity with quite a few; Wonwoo from Three, Lee Chan from Two. Minghao retrieves his knife from the corkboard, walking straight down the aisle. </p><p>“You try,” Minghao says, still standing in front of the target, concentric circles like a halo around his head. Soonyoung glances at the table of knives, varying greatly in shape and size, glinting at the end of the range. Over the years, Minghao’s made him good with a variety of weaponry, but the axe is still home. Center of gravity. </p><p>“Get out of the way,” Soonyoung says.</p><p>Minghao smiles, staring at him briefly, measuring up like there’s a target behind Soonyoung, too. </p><p>Before all this, the last time Soonyoung saw Minghao was deep in the pineries of District Seven. The Capitol routinely hauls a handful of victors around the districts, hoping to remind people; this could be you. Escaping Jeonghan wasn’t very hard, admittedly, and escaping all the workers out in the trees for the day wasn’t hard, either, when they’d always given the victor version of Soonyoung a painstakingly wide berth.</p><p>He’d been showing Minghao his family’s heirloom axe; deeply stained redwood handle, iron bit, the blade flared and shaved out into a thin crescent moon. Generations of wear on the grain of it, designs etched into the iron gone dull. Heavy as all hell and beautiful. </p><p>He’d wanted to split Minghao open like a tree, then, split him into sections. Count the rings in him like a trunk, find where he outgrew each one, make sense of him the way they do everything in District Seven, a solid swing and keen observation like, Xu Minghao, here is where I loved you most, and here is how I’ll never lose you. But instead Soonyoung just cut his finger on the blade, and put it in Minghao’s mouth, feeling his teeth. The hardest part of anyone.</p><p>In front of Soonyoung, Minghao gets out of the way. The knife lodges a centimeter below where Minghao’s had, only making the crevice in the cork a little longer.</p><p>“Showoff,” Minghao says.</p><p>“I missed,” Soonyoung parries. His heart is racing, muscle memory.</p><p>“Barely.”</p><p>The female victor from Five eyes them across the training center, spooling a bulky wire. Minghao clocks it, stalking off towards the rack of polearms on the opposite end of the room, leaving Soonyoung to the knife in the corkboard, feeling off balance. He throws more knives to the beat of the air whirling by faintly as Minghao twirls a halberd, just inside his line of vision.</p><p>Minghao’s a career, and one from District Four to boot. Of course the trident was his specialty; flashy and all for show, even when a spear would suffice just the same, but Minghao could still split an arrow at fifty paces, land throwing knives with terrifying accuracy, stop anyone dead in their tracks with a glance. The career pack was a bloodline built through transfusion. The only family it was possible to die into. They don’t look at each other, don’t speak for the rest of the day.</p><p>Soonyoung can’t tell what game they’re playing at—but it never hurts to leave the rest of the tributes confused, anyway. Let half of them think he and Minghao merely hate each other, threatening one another with knives, spears, and bows, and let the other half think they’re already allies. Maybe the confusion when it all comes together in the cornucopia will buy them enough time to bolt.</p><p>Minghao raises the halberd above his head, stance firm in front of a dummy. Heavy and well honed, the blow lodges clear through the would-be head. The stuffing expands from the wound and falls lightly to the floor. An avox rolls the dummy away, and replaces it with another one.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Soonyoung is sweating.</p><p>All the prep Jihoon has done with him for this has flown clear out of his head, and his mind reels as he watches the female tribute from Three weave herself a web on the TV screen, playing into Kibum’s hand. The standby room is buzzing with the low hum of stage lights and the far off hum of the audience. Minghao finally gets shoved into the room, the staff hooking up his mic, a hand up the back of his shirt taping the wire down.</p><p>Minghao sidles up next to him. Glances at him sideways. “Hell. What’s wrong with you?”</p><p>“I don’t wanna screw up this interview,” Soonyoung grits. “I feel like I just black out every time they put me up there. I don’t even know what I say, it just comes out.”</p><p>“You’ll be fine. You’re weirdly charming. They already like you.”</p><p>Easy enough for Minghao to say. Jeonghan always had him locked and loaded with a rotating inventory of lines to recite, perfectly engineered. Eerie calm. Staff members start ushering Minghao towards the sidestage, but he shakes them off and stands in front of Soonyoung, obscuring the screen.</p><p>“Are we selling this?” Minghao asks. He looks like an optical illusion, holographic blue smeared across his eyelids and out to his temples. </p><p>Soonyoung furrows his brow. “You’ve got career status under your belt. You can join any pack you want. I’m just the crazy guy with the axe.”</p><p>“You know I never needed the careers,” Minghao says. Under his gaze, Soonyoung feels like he’s being pummeled by five foot waves, held under the water, no idea which way is up. “I’m saying we have a story that will get us sponsors. I’m saying if we play this right there will be a carbon-steel axe sitting in that cornucopia for you tomorrow.”</p><p>“They’re gonna figure it out in the arena, anyways,” Soonyoung says. He wants to see if Minghao will say it.</p><p>“Yes, but why not hit the ground running?” Three’s second tribute is called onto the stage. The clamor of the crowd balloons, white noise in his ears.</p><p>“You’re going to go out there and say you love me?”</p><p>Minghao grins. He looks like one of those animals the gamemakers gave too many teeth. “No,” he says. “I’m going to go out there and tell them I refuse to die by any hand but yours, and you’re going to go out there and say the same of me.”</p><p>The roar swells and swells. Minghao’s late for his stage cue. “Isn’t that the same thing?”</p><p>Minghao smiles, glittery. Shrugs. “To you and me? Absolutely.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>“Soonyoung,” Key says brightly. His inflection dips and jumps, uncanny. “We haven’t seen you up on stage in a few years!”</p><p>Soonyoung’s hand meets Key’s in a tight, clammy handshake. “Well, to be honest, I never intended to be on this stage at all.”</p><p>Laughter wafts in from the crowd. Soonyoung sits. This year, the chairs are a ghastly white velvet. They’re impeccably clean, like they’ve never been sat in before. Behind Soonyoung, the stage lights are purple and orange, so concentrated that Soonyoung can’t tell what color Key’s hair is. The crowd settles.</p><p>Key waves his hands. “Nonsense, nonsense, we all missed seeing you. Even when you were here to mentor it wasn’t enough!”</p><p>Soonyoung puts on the fake smile, stiff as dried plaster. The lights swirl. Key leans forward in his seat, one elbow on his knee.</p><p>“Now,” he starts, “I have to ask; a certain someone from District Four had quite a bit to say about you.”</p><p>“Ah,” Soonyoung says. The media training starts coming back to him; smile shyly. Make a joke. Pretend it never hurt you. “Minghao?”</p><p>“Yes. The victor from the seventieth games, back to back with you. One we in the Capitol find most beloved, I dare say.” The crowd murmurs in agreement. Soonyoung glances at the thousand eyes shining back at him, like jungle cats. Coins in the bottom of a fountain glinting in the sun. He forgot how doing this makes him feel sick, violently ill.</p><p>“Forgive me,” Soonyoung says, faux. “I’m afraid I was still with my stylist, then, and didn’t catch his interview.” A lie. Soonyoung watched it on one of a hundred screens in stand-by, listened to Minghao weave the web for his allotted minute and thirty seconds with rapt attention, getting ready to go out there and tie up the loose ends. Soonyoung’s never been the best at truly polished public appearances, but he supposes that’s not what anyone ever liked him for.</p><p>Key smiles, animatronic. “Well, we know you tributes are very busy. But, he did tell me a little something.”</p><p>“And what is that?”</p><p>“Well.” A furtive glance towards the audience, as if Key might be telling him a secret. “He says; Kwon Soonyoung is the only challenge he might run into in this arena. And I’ve got half a mind to agree with him. You’ve always had quite the grip on that axe.”</p><p>Soonyoung, for all the work he did with Jihoon, chokes up. He has nothing to say to that.</p><p> Key picks up his slack, volleys. “Now let’s talk about you back in, what was it...seventy two?”</p><p>“Seventy one.”</p><p>“Of course.” Key grins at him. “Such a barren arena. All we had to look at was you!”</p><p>“Are you complaining?” Soonyoung says, grinning. He can feel Jihoon’s sigh of relief like a wind washing over him. There’s so much spit in his mouth, he thinks he might throw up.</p><p>“No, no! Of course not!”</p><p>Soonyoung goes blank. This is what Jihoon was talking about. He barely has half a second to sink or swim, but he’s frozen. He catches a cold look in Key’s eye, calculating how to carry the conversation, and it’s almost freakier than the fake smile. He reaches and pats Soonyoung on the knee, though the distance between their armchairs is too far for it to look natural.</p><p>“You. Were. So. Brave!” Key says, riling the crowd up. He turns his head to grin out at them, and Soonyoung has a direct view into his ear canal, wonders if the Capitol put a chip in his head and they just type shit into to make him say it. “We’ll never forget your victory that year. Awfully bloody, didn’t you think?”</p><p> Interviews on Kim Kibum’s pre-game show are always a practice in taxidermy; the lost art of making dead things look alive again. Soonyoung swallows his saliva. If he turns his head, he’s certain he’ll see Minghao watching from the wings, eyes dark as Soonyoung’s suit tonight. Key’s voice echoes in his head. <em> Brave</em>. There’s forty-five seconds left on the clock.</p><p><em> I wasn’t brave, </em> Soonyoung wishes he could say. <em> I was just blind. </em></p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>“I wish Jihoon would just get plastered and relax for five fucking seconds,” Soonyoung says. Every event in the Capitol has the guy’s nerves wound into a tight metal coil, and tonight, the pressure is on to find a few worthwhile sponsors and allies when Soonyoung’s up against twenty-three seasoned victors tomorrow. Especially when interpersonal relations and manipulation have never been Jihoon’s strong suit. Soonyoung watches him stiffen and then force out a practiced laugh as he chats up a clique of Capitol citizens, needling for sponsorships.</p><p>Minghao grins placatingly. “Jihoon would never. If he drinks too much, the stick might fall out of his ass.”</p><p>Soonyoung snorts. Jeonghan saunters across the glittering floor, stepping in next to Jihoon. </p><p>“They’re finally teaming up,” he observes, gesturing with his glass.</p><p>Minghao elbows him. “Be thankful. Jeonghan’s much better at this than Jihoon.”</p><p>The music interlaces with the heavy drums used in the opening ceremonies, and a vaguely familiar mentor from Eight nods to them as he passes by. The chandelier in the ceiling spins resolutely, sending the light shaking out across the floor. Soonyoung watches the female tribute from Four, Kyungwon, dance with someone from the Capitol, turning in wide circles. </p><p>Soonyoung wants to put his glass down, but there's no open table space in sight. “Do you remember when we met?”</p><p>Minghao laughs brightly. “Do you think I’m already becoming senile? Of course I do.”</p><p>“Why me?”</p><p>“What do you mean? You came up to me.”</p><p>Soonyoung flushes. “Yes, but—you seemed...prepared. Like you were expecting it.”</p><p>Minghao stares at him, a long, pincering kind of look. “I wanted to tell you; call me when you’re sick of it.” That made Soonyoung laugh, a little; the phone lines hardly work within the districts, and almost never in between them. “But when I saw you, I knew you already were.”</p><p>“Knew I was what?”</p><p>“Sick of it.”</p><p>“‘It’ being…?”</p><p>“How everyone looks at you differently. Sick of missing the high.”</p><p>“Silly of us,” Soonyoung says. He didn’t love his games, that much is true. But sometimes, Soonyoung liked it. Bright lights, stage magicians, the stare that lingers too long.  He had to like it, or it would kill him. It would have killed him.</p><p>Minghao swallows. “Yeah.”</p><p>Soonyoung fidgets, transferring his glass from hand to hand. Being back in the Capitol makes him itch, makes his feel like his skin is on too tight. He feels the hedonism leaching into him through his pores, like it’s a disease you can catch by proximity, radiation poisoning, a thing with radius. It makes him contrary, makes him not himself. Or at least, his other self; the one that didn’t split hairs about murder, the one that drank and ate and danced himself across all of Panem in search of a similar fix, an adrenaline junkie in search of a better high. </p><p>“Let’s get out of here,” Soonyoung says. Jihoon will be angry, but Soonyoung’s never known him when he isn’t. “My makeup is itchy.”</p><p>Minghao follows him across the floor and out towards the elevators, ornately decorated with intricately welded metal that Soonyoung’s never learned the name of. He watches the numbers descend on the flat panel above the doors, slow.</p><p>When it opens, Minghao steps inside first. He presses seven, then leans against the glass wall. Soonyoung faces him, looking openly as the courtyard in the building falls out of sight, elevator rising.</p><p>“Would you be angry if I gave up?” Soonyoung says. He’s so tired, suddenly.</p><p>“Yes. But you’re not going to.”</p><p>Soonyoung bites a smile down. “How do you know?”</p><p>“I just know.” Minghao stands to his full height. “I know exactly who you are.”</p><p>Soonyoung pushes. “Don’t wanna see me go down easy, huh?”</p><p>Minghao has him by the chin, the grip tight but not painful. “No. At the end I want it to be you, and me.” Soonyoung stares at him. Minghao’s eyes are limpid, even in the dark. “You and me. Do you understand?”</p><p>Soonyoung tilts his chin up, feels the way his eyes are glazing over. “I could kill you,” he says, surprised by the emotion behind it. He puts a hand to Minghao’s throat, thumb against the suprasternal notch, doesn't press at all.</p><p>Minghao levels his gaze. “I’d be honored if you tried.”</p><p>Seven floors, but this elevator might go on forever. “I could kill you,” Soonyoung says again. His nostrils flare, his body catches a glimpse of an adrenaline rush. The control panel dings. The doors slide open. Minghao kisses him. Starts walking him backwards into the tiny lobby with one door for each of Seven’s tributes. Soonyoung sighs, opening his eyes again slowly to unlock his door, turning around in Minghao’s grip to let the security pad rove blue light over his palm, taking fingerprints. Unlocked, the door slides into the wall.</p><p>At the end of the bed, an avox has set out tomorrow’s arena wear, along with a pair of boots aligned neatly on the floor. Soonyoung’s eyeline skips over it, barely registers the feel of its fabric when Minghao pushes him down on the bed. It’s so hard to get out of his stupid outfit—he wasn’t paying attention when his stylist did all the buttons up or tied all the knots, and he feels like a serpent shedding its skin, scraping against rocks to peel an old layer off. </p><p>“How did you get this on,” Minghao laughs, tugging at a—strap? Buckle? He kneels on the edge of the bed, slinging Soonyoung’s thighs around his own. Soonyoung lifts his hips up a few inches, trying to see how he’s straightjacketed into his—pants? They’re connected to something that comes up around his shoulder somehow.</p><p>“You think there’s scissors in here?” Soonyoung says, glancing around the room. The over the shoulder bullshit comes free, and he stretches, feeling the room it gives him to move and breathe, arms over his head. “Or does the Capitol still think that’s a liability?”</p><p>Minghao looms over him, working at more closures. His hand is hot when it finally finds some of Soonyoung’s skin, sliding up to his sternum, hard bones at the heel of his palm. “Your prep team is a bunch of cockblockers,” he drolls, popping some more buttons, pulling a hem down.</p><p>“Whatever,” Soonyoung says. Minghao smiles, all teeth, and places his hand down over Soonyoung’s dick through the fabric of his getup, then squeezes. The sensation is sort of weird and wide-reaching, the way you have to spread your weight evenly to not fall through ice, but it feels good, and Minghao knows it.</p><p>“Been a while?” he asks lazily, watching Soonyoung squirm and wince. He’s flushed and gone red just from laying there, has the potential to break a sweat.</p><p>Soonyoung huffs, letting his head fall back. Minghao laughs, bright and easy, even more so when Soonyoung grabs a hold of his collar and pulls him so that they are face to face, chest to chest, halfway skin to skin. Soonyoung holds him by his chin, tight between his thumb and forefinger.</p><p>“You can’t seriously think you’re the only person who’s ever fucked me,” Soonyoung says. His voice exerts gravity, a kind of inverted magnetism, so close Minghao can hardly stand it.</p><p>“Of course not,” Minghao agrees. He sits up, pushes Soonyoung’s thighs apart until he winces. “I’m just the only one who does it right.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Years ago, Jihoon stood in a launch room exactly like this one with Soonyoung, who-knows-how-many kilometers away, and told Soonyoung that if worse comes to worst, there is a spot in the chest that, when hit hard enough, will stop someone’s heart. Today, he just looks at Soonyoung flatly. Says, “You don’t need me to tell you not to die.”</p><p>“Jihoon,” Soonyoung says.</p><p>Jihoon holds a hand up, closes his eyes. “Don’t.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>A voice drones over the speaker system; <em> thirty seconds to launch</em>. Jihoon pinches the uniform, feeling the material.</p><p>“The suit is thermal. I’m thinking you’re headed into the cold. And knowing these gamemakers, probably cold enough to die at night. They want you to risk making fires,force alliances by making it impossible to survive alone. I’ll bet my ass there’s extra clothing in the very back of that cornucopia. I hate to say it, but it’ll probably be worth the risk.”</p><p>Soonyoung hadn’t been thinking about any of that. He feels like he’s going to vomit, or cry, or dissolve from the inside out—fifteen seconds to launch—but in his head he imagines seeing Minghao in that arena, four platforms to his left, thinks about the solidity in their understanding, feels his resolve crystallize in stone.</p><p>Soonyoung spent the whole hovercraft ride here looking across the gap between each row of seats in the dim hangar, wishing he could have just loved someone else, or even better; no one, and made things easier on himself for once. But instead, Soonyoung’s got skin in the game—miles and miles of fucking skin in the game, got love like a swarm of gnats he can never see in front of.</p><p>Ten seconds to launch. Soonyoung steps backwards into the chute, waits for the glass to slide down around him.</p><p>“I’ll be seeing you,” Jihoon says, his voice wavering like the bottom of a boat. “Soon.”</p><p>Eight. Seven. Six. Soonyoung can’t breathe. “You don’t know that. You don’t.”</p><p>“What’s worse? Knowing or not knowing?”</p><p>
  <em> I could kill you. I could kill you. </em>
</p><p>“Knowing,” Soonyoung says.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>please say shit to me</p></blockquote></div></div>
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